


Sciamachy, and The Boy Who Saw Monsters

by orphan_account



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Coming of Age, Destiny, Fate, Gods, Haru is literally being stalked by those things, Haru sees things, M/M, Magical Realism, Monsters, Mythical Beings & Creatures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-07 04:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4249905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In fourth grade, Haruka finds a note slipped in between the pages of his math textbook. It’s written on plain lined paper, in neat blue print. </p><p><em>Nanase Haruka,</em> he reads. <em>Did you know that you have a brilliant destiny ahead of you?</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the boy who saw monsters

**Author's Note:**

> Sciamachy:  
>  _n._ the act or instance of fighting a shadow or imaginary opponent

The universe works in strange and mysterious ways.

If asked, Nanase Haruka’s mother will swear up and down that the day her son was born, every pipe in the house started leaking, as if the water itself was reaching out in search of a child who would one day live and breathe for it.

Of course, if asked, Nanase Haruka’s mother will also swear up and down that there was something else in that hospital room the day her son was born: something invisible, something _watching_.

So maybe it’s hardly surprising that most people just shake their heads and smile when Haruka’s mother starts talking about her son’s birth. And maybe they’re right, to wonder exactly how many painkillers the doctors at Iwatobi General Hospital had been  _giving_ the woman at the time.

But maybe, just maybe, people should put just a little bit more stock into a mother’s intuition, sometimes.

 

* * *

 

Nanase Haruka’s first encounter with the otherworld is both innocuous and oblique, a nonchalant little warning that’s almost surreal in its mundanity.

It happens like this.

In second grade, Haruka finds a note slipped in between the pages of his math textbook.

It’s written on plain lined paper, in neat blue print. _Nanase Haruka_ , he reads. _Did you know that you have a brilliant destiny ahead of you?_

Nothing else happens. There are no explosions, no bright and flashy sparks of light. No trumpets start blaring, and no mystical bells ring. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that something out of the ordinary has happened.

He frowns, and immediately comes to the conclusion that Rin is playing a prank on him.

If it's a prank, though, it's not a very good one. It's stuck in that middle ground that's so often the death of pranks like this one: not quite absurd enough to be funny, but not sensible enough to be realistic, either.

And Rin’s handwriting looks nothing like the writing on the note, of course. For one thing, _his_ handwriting is absolutely hideous.

But of course, there are ways to get around little problems like that, and Haruka’s seven-year-old mind has no trouble coming up with them.

He hesitates for a moment, and glances around.

Rin is in a different class, and therefore will not be able to see him keep the piece of paper. There is no risk of being made fun of.

Still, he looks around once more, just to be sure, and folds the piece of paper up carefully before he tucks it into his pencil case.

 

* * *

 

Nanase Haruka’s second encounter with the otherworld occurs exactly seven days, seven hours, seven minutes and seventeen seconds after the first. As if to make up for the blandness of that first encounter, it naturally ends up being the most incredibly unsubtle —and quite frankly the most straight-up _bizarre_ — event in the history of his not-particularly-long existence.

This particular encounter starts with a woman.

A woman who has scaly green skin.

She’s leaning against the blackboard in seventh period history class when Haruka slips back into the classroom after a visit to the restroom.

No one else seems to have noticed her presence.

The teacher certainly hasn’t, still lecturing about Oda Nobunaga’s death in 1582, a subject that should be interesting but somehow _isn’t_. The students haven’t either: they're watching the blackboard with glazed-over eyes, drifting through a post-lunch stupor.

The world does not end, even despite the apparently blatant affront to all human logic and rationality that's standing right there in Haruka's classroom. The clock keeps ticking, a slow and monotonous countdown spiralling towards the end of time. The sun keeps shining. The boy in the furthest seat to the left in the back row keeps playing with his phone under the table.

Haruka stands in the doorway, paralyzed. He opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.

The woman shifts slightly, and turns to look at him. Her mouth splits open at the edges when she smiles, extending past her lips and all the way to her ears to reveal rows upon rows of small, pointed teeth.

She meets his gaze with an air of friendly curiosity. Her eyes are blank and white.

 _No pupils_ , Haruka thinks. He’s feeling a little dazed himself.

“Sit _down_ , Nanase,” snaps the teacher, finally noticing him just standing there.

The woman snickers silently, hiding her laugh behind one scaled hand.

“Yes, sir,” says Haruka obediently. He makes his way to his desk almost mechanically, and sits down in his seat.

He spends the rest of the lesson trying not to look at the woman. She doesn’t pay him the same courtesy, and her empty white eyes remain on him until he leaves the room.

 

* * *

 

For Haruka, the next few years are filled with many such encounters along the same lines.

The otherworld is, after all, intertwined impossibly tightly with the fabric of the realm inhabited by humanity, like two images superimposed over one another. And despite its somewhat misleading name, there is really no clear distinction between the two, no boundary drawn in the sand save for the walls humans build in their own minds.

Most people go through their lives without ever catching a glimpse of the otherworld.

They live in a state of willful ignorance, blindness so deeply ingrained in their subconscious that even when they’re _trying_ to see, all they can ever catch are ephemeral flickers out of the very corners of their eyes.

It's not their fault, of course. That's just the way things work, now.

But Nanase Haruka is different.

For better or for worse, Nanase Haruka was born with his eyes wide open. After he _really_ starts to see the unseen, the otherworld wastes no time in sitting up and taking notice.

There’s a legitimate and rather persuasive argument about how most people like very few things more than being paid attention to. In this way, the denizens of the otherworld are really no different from anyone else.

They flock to him, of course, for he is their unwitting shepherd and they are his sheep.

He sees a toddler boy with eight spider-like legs stuffed into his shorts playing on the swings in the playground. He notices a jar filled with squirming purple tentacles pushed in among the cans of preserved tomatoes in the sketchy downtown supermarket that his mom likes for the discounts, but everyone else seems to subconsciously avoid.

When he goes to the bathroom in the dead of night, his reflection in the mirror grins darkly at him, and waves.

And the next time he goes to the pool, there’s a mermaid in the water with him. Her eyes are bulbous and filmy, and her skin is grey and slightly slimy to the touch. She’s certainly no red-haired Ariel, but in the way she pushes herself through the chlorinated water with her webbed hands and barnacle-encrusted tail rests all the grace and power of a dolphin.

 

* * *

 

It’s an inherently disturbing feeling for a young child, to see things that no one else sees.

To be fair, watching a two-headed cat the size of a motorcycle with glowing green eyes attempting to cross the road without getting hit by a car would probably be rather unsettling for most people. Nearly getting  _hit_  by one of its six thrashing tails would probably be even more so.

But somehow there’s something particularly alarming about being a little boy and checking under the bed for monsters, and then finding a wild-eyed girl with stringy black hair and teeth like broken glass curling up with the teddy bear you thought you’d left at your aunt’s house.

Still— children are resilient and adaptive creatures. Expose one to something for long enough, and eventually they'll get used to it. It’s just a fact of life.

And as it so happens, as time goes by, Nanase Haruka does indeed grow used to things as they stand.

And if certain occurrences started to happen more and more frequently as he grew up, well… what exactly was _he_ supposed to about it?

When it came down to it, really, it wasn't particularly difficult to ignore the things that only he could see. They certainly noticed him, but even if they did watch him with a certain hunger in their eyes, they never seemed to approach him, or speak to him. That was the status quo, and Haruka was happy to keep things that way.

Or at least, that was the status quo until a certain day a good number of years into the future.

The catalyst for _that_ particular change wasn't exceptionally flashy either. All that really happened, in the end, was that he met a boy who wrote with a blue pen in obnoxiously neat print, and called himself  _Makoto_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first foray into the Free! fandom, which I love dearly, since I've been mostly hanging out over in the Haikyuu and Madoka Magica fandoms. It was inspired by my new friend aurics, the first other fic writer that I've ever met in real life, and a generally wonderful person. Uh, please treat me kindly? =D


	2. that which was written in the stars

A common misconception among human beings is that destiny implies greatness.

It’s silly, of course. Everyone has a destiny, from the lowliest of servants to the most glorious of emperors. The choices that will define their lives have been written in the stars for eternities, and will remain there until the very end of time.

Maybe that does suggest greatness, in a way. After all, every life has its ups and downs, its tragedies and its triumphs. Maybe that, too, can be called greatness—

But if it can be, then it’s a very mundane sort of greatness, and certainly not the type that is revered in human literature and history.

Destiny is typically rather lackluster, if you think about it. When considering the matter from purely statistical perspective, it quickly becomes apparent that growing up to be a perfectly ordinary salesperson at a perfectly ordinary company and then dying a perfectly ordinary death is a far more likely destiny for most people than, say, being destined to be the second coming of Leonardo da Vinci.

But some people, of course, really _are_ destined for greatness. They are the anomalies, the glitches in the cosmic system. They are the rare blips in the network of predestination charted out in the heavens.

Nanase Haruka is an anomaly. He is ordinary in every way but one.

Nanase Haruka is an anomaly, and written in the stars for him is, indeed, a story that glitters high up in the velvet night sky.

(The art of reading destiny in the stars has long been lost to humanity. But the otherworld has always had no shortage of creatures who remember, and so it should come as a surprise to absolutely no one that the great majority of the unseen world has been watching the boy named Nanase Haruka from the very moment of his birth.)

 

* * *

 

The day after Nanase Haruka’s seventeenth birthday is July 1st, 2015.

It is not a particularly special day in Iwatobi, although according to Wikipedia, it is the 21st birthday of the very pretty Japanese actress and fashion model Okamoto Anri, and also the 18th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule after over a hundred and fifty years under British rule.

Haru walks to school alone, steadfastly ignoring the disembodied hand crawling slowly out of the sewer. He spends the majority of his lessons daydreaming about the swimming pool. He quietly ducks out of sight at the start of lunch break without waiting for Nagisa and Rei and that other first year boy who Nagisa recruited for the swim club to come looking for him, and slips away to eat his boxed lunch behind the sports shed.

In other words, for Nanase Haruka (a boy who just so happens to neither be a fan of Okamoto Anri nor a resident of Hong Kong), it is a perfectly normal Wednesday.

Or at least it would have been, except that exactly seven minutes after the start of lunch break, he gets hit in the head with a paper plane.

It’s certainly not just _any_ paper plane. The particular paper plane that hits Nanase Haruka in the head on the 1st of July in the year 2015 is unique among its brethren in that it has come from a place beyond the realms of human comprehension.

Outwardly, however, it is wholly unremarkable. As if to add insult to injury, it is not particularly well crafted, either.

Getting hit does not hurt, but it certainly startles Haru, and he drops his chopsticks into his lap. The paper plane itself bounces off his forehead and falls into his rice.

After the initial surprise, he looks around.

It’s always quiet behind the sports shed, an attribute that has had the unfortunate effect of making it a popular location for discreet after-school meetings among the young couples of Iwatobi High School. He listens for the sound of footsteps, or giggles— perhaps some mischievous couple is bonding through the shared experience of pranking the aloof (and slightly eccentric) loner of the second-year class.

But Haruka is the only one there at that particular moment in time, and the only sounds audible are the screeches of bugs and the distant chatter of the energetic first-year boys trying to fit in a quick game of soccer before lunch break ends.

Iwatobi summers are much too hot, and a bead of sweat trickles down his face. His hair is a little damp and sticks to his forehead unpleasantly.

Even despite the blazing heat, though, it’s better out here than it is in the classroom building, where the stench of too many sticky teenaged bodies crammed into one enclosed space hangs thick in the air.

He hesitates for a moment, and then carefully picks the paper plane out of his lunchbox. There’s some rice stuck to it, and it’s a little oily from the mackerel.

Haru brushes the rice off carefully, and then unfolds it. The plane is made out of regular lined paper, and there’s writing inside, in neat blue print.

 _Nanase Haruka_ , it says. _Are you ready?_

He stares.

“Ready for what?” he says aloud, and he looks around, but no answer seems forthcoming.

He shrugs, and goes back to his meal.

 

* * *

 

The first time something from the otherworld actually _speaks_ to Haru is July 1st, 2015, about seven minutes before the end of lunch break, although he does not realize what’s happening until a little while later. He has a slightly oily paper plane in his pocket, and he is on his way back to his classroom.

And while that might sound like a fairly non-threatening situation, it isn’t.

The supremely unromantic fact of the matter is this: in the summer, schools tend to be exceptionally unpleasant places to be in, and Iwatobi High School is no exception. For one thing, it’s hot, and the fact that air-conditioning unit is frequently broken is an unfortunate peril of being a student at Iwatobi High.

For another thing, summer vacation starts on the 20th of July. The humdrum hustle and bustle of the educational system is no more intolerable than it has been the rest of the year, of course, but it’s only when the end is in sight that the typical high schooler really awakens from the stupor that they’ve been languishing in, and begins to feel restless.

It’s due to a combination of those two factors that Haru finds himself trapped in a crush of warm, sticky and _fidgety_ bodies, slowly moving in every direction possible.

He’s pretty much resigned himself to dying a sweaty, wholly unhappy death when someone taps him on the shoulder.

Haruka turns. Or at least he makes an attempt at turning. It doesn’t really work out, considering how tightly packed they all are, but he manages to sort of twist his head a little.

The boy standing behind him is wearing an Iwatobi High uniform and appears average in most regards, save for the fact that he is a good deal taller than Haru, and considerably better looking than most people in their age group.

He does not have any (visible) extra limbs, nor are his green eyes glowing unnaturally. His smile is rather meek, and not deranged in the slightest. His hair is a boring shade of brown.

He also seems to have the proper number of human teeth.

It therefore seems to be fairly reasonable to assume that he is both human, and an Iwatobi High student.

On a not-entirely-unrelated note, making assumptions is typically a bad idea.

“You’re Haruka, right?” says the boy. He has to strain to make himself heard over everyone else in the corridor. “Nanase Haruka?”

“Don’t call me that,” says Haru. He makes to cross his arms, but there’s not enough room. “It’s just Haru.”

A second too late, he realizes the peculiarity of this boy, who he’s never even seen before, knowing his name.

“Haru, then,” the boy says obligingly. “It’s wonderful to finally meet you properly. Would you mind if we continued this conversation elsewhere?”

“I—” Haru starts, uncertainly, and then realizes that he’d really like nothing _more_ than to be somewhere other than, well, here. He likes water, but the heat and sweat is really starting to get to him. Then, because he is who he is, and because being Haru has always meant being a little eccentric, he says, “Can we go somewhere with a pool?”

The boy blinks. He looks a little caught off guard, but then he smiles awkwardly and reaches out to catch a strand of Haru’s hair between his fingers.

Haru’s breath catches in his throat. The gesture is startlingly intimate, for someone he’s just met.

“Okay,” says the boy, and then they are elsewhere.

 

* * *

 

Teleportation, as it turns out, is disappointingly lacking in bells and whistles. It’s a simple concept, really. One minute they’re in a crowded hallway on the second floor of Iwatobi High School, and the next, they’re somewhere else. Iwatobi High School’s very own outdoor swimming pool, to be precise.

There is a whirlpool raging in the deep end— as far as whirlpools in swimming pools go, it’s pretty impressive, but the only things caught up in it are a few insects, and some dead leaves. In the shallow end, a muscular woman with twelve scaly legs and six long necks lounges by the ladder.

She’s got a head for each neck, Haruka notices bemusedly, and each head belongs to a different species of dog. One’s clearly a Labrador, and another’s a beagle. He’s not too sure about the other four.

She’s also completely naked, and so from that point onwards, Haruka studiously avoids looking at any part of her _other_ than the dog heads.

“You can see them, right?” says the boy, who seems completely unaffected by the dog-woman’s nudity. “Scylla and Charbydis?”

Then he actually looks at Haru, gives a start, and blushes a deep red that starts in his cheeks and continues all the way up to the tips of his ears.

“Yes,” Haru says. He’s already stripped down to just his pants: his shirt lies crumpled in a pile with his backpack. A second later, his belt and pants join them, and then he’s striding forwards in just his swimsuit.

The boy squeaks. “Hey,” he says, “Hey, _wait!_ Aren’t you— that’s _dangerous!”_

But Haru, of course, waits for no one, and not even a teleporting fake high school student can stop him when he’s on a mission.

He dives in.

The water is lukewarm. It’s an outdoor pool, after all: Iwatobi High isn’t rich enough to afford an indoor one, not like Samezuka or the multitudes of fancy private schools in Tokyo. Still, a pool is a pool, and being in the water feels like coming home. Even if he _does_ have to share it with a dog-lady and a whirlpool.

He drifts to the surface and just floats there for a moment, utterly content. The dog-lady looks suspiciously at him with all six of her heads. Her beagle head rears up and gives a rumbling growl.

Haru gives the beagle head a withering look. It whimpers and retreats. The Labrador head makes a sound halfway between a bark and a laugh.

“Aren’t you scared?” says a voice wonderingly.

Haru looks up. The boy is on his hands and knees by the edge of the pool, leaning over to look him in the eye. He’s very tall, and his shoulders are broad— handsome. The sort of boy who would never lack for admirers, if he really had been a high school student.

Somehow the stiffness in his back and the properness of his whole demeanor makes Haru want to laugh, a little.

“No,” Haru says honestly. It’s true. He’s used to seeing monsters by now, and nothing has ever scared him in the water, anyway.

The boy smiles, and sits back on his heels. 

“So it’s true, then,” he says. The way he looks at Haru when he says it is almost _reverential_ , as if Haru is holding the moon in one hand and the stars in the other, as if he’s being illuminated in their glow. “You really are the one we’ve been waiting for.”

Haru squirms. There are many things that a person can grow used to, over time, like wearing swimming trunks under one’s trousers and seeing things that others cannot, but Haru is not used to this. If given enough time, perhaps he could grow accustomed to it—

But he’s not sure he’d want to. It is, after all, a rather peculiar feeling, to be looked at like you’re the center of someone’s world, and they can’t bear to look away.

He sticks his hand out. After a few seconds, Haru realizes that he’s supposed to shake it. He rises out of the water and takes the proffered hand.

“I’m Makoto,” says the boy, and even Haruka can hear the awe thrumming through his voice. His hand is warm and dry against Haruka’s wet one. “We’ve been waiting for you, Nanase Haruka. For a long, long time.”

Haru drops his hand abruptly, and looks away. “Stop that,” he says, and sinks into the water until the water reaches up to his nose.

Makoto blinks. “What’s wrong?” he says. His green eyes shine with concern, but the way he looks at Haru, the way his eyes follow Haruka wherever he goes— it’s like he thinks that Haru is something precious and fragile, like he needs to drink as much of Haru in as possible because Haru’s going to crumble to pieces if he so much as blinks.

“Stop— stop looking at me like that,” Haru says. He doesn’t know how else to vocalize it.

“Oh,” says Makoto, crestfallen, and averts his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s just… _I’ve_ been waiting for you too, you know.”

“Waiting for me?” Haru repeats, pressing his lips together tightly.

Makoto nods frantically. “Yes,” he says. “I’ve been waiting for you. Nanase Haruka, did you know that you have a brilliant destiny ahead of you?”

They’re familiar words, and suddenly Haru realizes that he doesn’t like where this conversation is going. The air feels chilly against Haru’s skin. He pushes himself up and out of the pool in one fluid movement.

“I have to go,” he says abruptly, and pulls on his shirt. It’s not an easy task when he’s still dripping wet, but he manages. His pants are slightly harder, and he struggles for a moment before finally succeeding.

“But—” starts Makoto, dismayed. “Where are you going?”

Haru ignores him. Instead he pulls on his backpack, jumps the fence, and walks faster than he’s ever walked in his life.

He doesn’t slow down until Makoto is out of sight.

 

* * *

 

The first thing that Nanase Haruka does after he gets home is lock the doors and the windows. The second thing he does is draw the blinds shut, and the third thing he does is unplug the TV.

 The fourth thing that Nanase Haruka does after he gets home is rummage through his bag for his pencil case. The fifth thing he does is dig through the pencil case itself, and the sixth thing he does is unfold the crumpled piece of paper he finds inside.

The seventh thing that Nanase Haruka does is read the writing on the paper.

 _Nanase Haruka_ , it says. _Did you know that you have a brilliant destiny ahead of you?_

 

* * *

 

In the end, the most important thing to remember that everyone _always_ ends up forgetting is that destiny never fails to make absolute and perfect sense.

That’s the way the cosmos write things, after all. Everything makes sense in the grand scheme of things.

The only problem is that most of the time, since human beings tend to have rather limited perspective on the grand scheme of things, destiny appears to be rather senseless, really— an implausible, inconsistent and quite frankly absurd series of unreasonable events that with no basis in logic or any comprehensible form of reasoning.

It isn’t, of course. But such is the nature of human beings, and indeed of life in general. The man who wakes up one morning to find his wife hanging from the ceiling fan does not see the logic behind his wife’s choice, nor does he see the overall impact of their fates, in the universe’s ultimate designs. What he sees is loss, his own grief reflected in his wife’s empty eyes.

And yet even the most tragic of events make sense, in the wide and unblinking eyes of the cosmos.

In much the same way, the events revolving around Nanase Haruka that took place in July of the year 2015 did indeed make absolute and perfect sense.

To the boy in question, however… well, in July of the year 2015, much of his life appeared to make absolutely no sense at all.


	3. the inescapable chains of fate

The thing about elaborate and infallible systems like destiny is that you can’t run away.

This is not a new idea, or even a particularly interesting one. There are plenty of stories already, in human literature and beyond, about people who gave it their best shot and failed anyway.

Orpheus couldn’t do it, and Macbeth couldn’t do it. Oedipus  _definitely_ couldn’t do it.

It really shouldn’t have been so difficult for humanity to grasp that there was never any point in trying to run, but human beings have always been rather silly like that. They cannot exactly be faulted for it, either: foolishness is in their natures, inscribed in their very bones.

The fact of the matter is that it cannot be done. A dramatic escape from destiny is not possible. There’s nowhere in the universe to hide when the very thing you’re hiding from is the universe itself: shouldn’t that just be common sense?

The point being made here is not necessarily that Nanase Haruka was foolish for running from us, although that certainly was the case.

It’s that we were always going to catch him, in the end.

 

* * *

  

It is precisely 6:59 AM on the 2nd day of July in the year 2015, and Nanase Haruka is sitting in his bathtub.

The water is lukewarm and slowly getting cooler. He shifts slightly. His fingers are wrinkled, as if he’s aged decades in the hour and thirty-six minutes that he’s been sitting there.

Nanase Haruka is trying very, very hard not to think about things like destiny.

Being in the water helps, of course, but not enough. Even here, in the place that Haru feels safest, Makoto’s voice rings in his ears and echoes off the tiled bathroom walls.

 _Nanase Haruka_ , _did you know that you have a brilliant destiny ahead of you?_

He groans, and sinks a little deeper into the water. It’s soft against his skin, a comforting caress.  _Go away_ , he wants to say in response, to Makoto and maybe even to the world as a whole.  _Go away and leave me alone._

But he is alone in the room, and his throat feels like it's been stopped up with treacle, so instead he bites his lip and stares at the tiles on the wall. One of the tiles is slightly chipped, he notices distantly. It is indistinguishable from all the others, except for the fact that it is slightly chipped, and because of that it will never truly be the same.

The house is dark. The doors and windows are still locked, and the blinds are still drawn, but Haru isn’t in any hurry to open them. Not with what’s waiting for him outside.

Going to school, of course, is out of the question.

He wonders if he should get up. He’s starting to get hungry, but at the same time he doesn’t want to get out of the tub quite yet.

And then, as if to prove that there isn't a single place on the planet that's safe from the creeping fingers of the otherworld, the clock strikes seven, and every phone in the house starts to ring at once.

It’s a shrill cacophony of noise, a symphony of discord slowly making its way to a crescendo. Haru can hear them even from behind the closed door of the bathroom, and he knows exactly what they want. Their voices thrum like electricity over his skin.

 _Nanase Haruka_ , they sing. _Listen to us. You have to._

Haru ignores the spike of fear that lances through his chest— it's a twisting, invasive feeling, and he doesn't like it at all.

They can’t hurt him, he reminds himself. They’ve never hurt him before and they have no reason to start now.

He takes a deep breath and then plunges beneath the surface of the water. With the water in his ears the clamor is muted, but he can hear it anyway.

Even Haru can't hold his breath forever, but he gives it his very best shot. He stays there, concealed within the murky porcelain depths of the bathtub, until his airways are burning and lungs beg for mercy.

When his head inevitably breaks the surface, he clamps his hands over his ears and reluctantly gets to his feet. Getting out of the bathtub is difficult, if only because he really doesn’t want to. He reaches for a towel, and—

And that, of course, is the moment that the universe flips upside down.

“My, my,” says his reflection, with a smile dripping with malice. The mirror is still a little fogged up at the edges, but Haru can see the dark look in his reflection’s blue eyes perfectly fine. “Are you finally planning on getting that, then?”

Haru freezes. He feels like his stomach’s been weighed down with lead. He is being _spoken_ to.

“What?” says his reflection innocently, but it looks wickedly amused. “Oh, are you surprised? Thought darling little Makoto was the only one who could talk? We’ve got mouths too— well, some of us, anyway.”

His mouth is dry. Haru swallows, throat parched, and takes a step back, towel forgotten. He fumbles for the door handle.

“Why haven’t you talked to me before?” he says, deceptively impassive. His eyes are carefully blank but his heart is pounding out a fierce rhythm against his ribcage.

His reflection coos. It flickers, for a moment, and suddenly Haru is staring at his seven-year-old self. The smile on its face widens.

“Were you _lonely_ , Haruka?” asks the reflection, its voice high and childish. “Because mommy and daddy were never home? Oh, but we were just following the rules, though. It’s not _our_ fault it takes you humans so long to grow up.”

“Stop it,” says Haruka. His fingers close around the handle.

The reflection laughs. “Goodness,” it says. “Did I hit a sore spot? Where are your parents now? Another business trip? But don’t worry— you’ll never be have to alone again, Haruka.”

Haru yanks the door open and stumbles out. He’s dripping on the floor but he’s never really cared about that anyway. The reflection laughs again, loud and clear, like it knows something that Haru doesn’t.

The cacophonous ringing stops, briefly, and then starts up again.

Haru staggers down the stairs and into the kitchen. The landline is buzzing furiously, louder than he’s ever heard it before.

He takes a deep breath, and then picks up the phone.

“Hello?” he says.

The line crackles, and then—

“Haru,” says Makoto on the other end, the word rushing out of him like an exhale. “Oh, Haru, thank goodness. I thought you were never going to pick up.”

Haru says nothing, and waits.

After a few seconds, Makoto’s voice picks up again. “Listen,” says Makoto. “I know this is weird for you. But— look, can we meet up somewhere? Please?”

Haru thinks about it, for a minute. There is a knife lying on the countertop from when he was cooking last night. He glances at it, and maybe it’s a trick of the light, but he thinks his reflection winks at him from the shiny metal surface.

“Yes,” he says at last. “The fountain, at the strip mall.”

He hangs up.

Iwatobi is a small town, and there is only one strip mall. Makoto will find it.

 

* * *

 

The strip mall is not far from his house, and Haru has been there many times before to take advantage of the large selection of swimwear stores it boasts.

Still, the walk there is unsettling enough to make him wish that he’d demanded Makoto come to his house instead.

There are many things that can tip a person off about something being deeply, intrinsically wrong. For some people, it's something that someone says, or a flash of inspiration. For others, it's the fact that their reflection is looking them in the eye and trying to hold a merry conversation.

For Haru, it's that second one, and  _more_.

When he leaves his house there is a waif-like fae girl with long white hair and no mouth waiting outside his door. He eyes her warily but she makes no move to approach him. When he starts walking, though, she follows, staying exactly seven steps behind him at all times.

And she’s not the only one, either.

About half a minute later, a bird with the head of a wrinkled old man flaps down from a telephone wire. It hovers in the air for a moment, pelican wings flapping leisurely. When Haru ignores it, it drifts lazily after him, clearly in no hurry but obviously following him all the same. A tiny little freshwater wyrm rears its head out of the drain after seeing him, and deftly begins to follow Haru down the street from the sewer system.

When he reaches the zebra crossing, a troll with a sharp, pointed nose and a pair of disproportionately long arms that reach almost to its skinny ankles crawls out of a manhole and, after daintily kicking the manhole back in place with one hairy foot, lumbers after him.

By the time he’s rounding the corner to the strip mall, Haru’s entourage is enormous and only growing bigger. None of them seem particularly inclined to talk to him, content to just follow along in his wake.

Haru pointedly ignores them all, and keeps on walking.

 

* * *

 

Makoto is sitting by the fountain when Haru finally shows up, about seventeen minutes after he left the house. The look of relief on his face is unmistakable.

“Haru!” he cries, rising to his feet. His whole face lights up, like he’s been spent his whole life waiting for this moment to come. “I was worried you weren’t going to come!”

Haru squirms and folds his arms across his chest. Makoto blushes, smiling shyly. Then he notices the rather impressive collection of creatures and beasts gathering by the fountain, and gives a start.

It’s getting to the point where they’re actually starting to get in the way of all the normal people doing their normal, everyday things. A young woman wearing a pair of very expensive-looking shoes and carrying two bulging grocery bags nearly trips over a creature that looks bizarrely like a cross between a rabbit and a duck. The duck-bunny snaps its beak lividly at her as she walks away, but she doesn't see it. No one does, except Haru.

“Oh no,” says Makoto, his eyes widening. “What are you all _doing_ here? I thought you were told not to overwhelm him!”

A skinny looking hag with a long white beard thumps the ground with her cane. “Don’t be so _selfish_ , Makoto,” she rasps out chidingly. “We wanted to come see Haruka too, you know.”

The little fae girl who’d been waiting in front of Haru’s house nods vigorously. Her eyes flicker to Haru, and her pale cheeks flush a dusky pink.

“I— uh—” Makoto says, clearly torn, and then shakes his head. “Absolutely _not!_ You’re _scaring_ him, and anyway, do you really want to disobey direct orders? Especially about something as important as this?”

The hag grumbles, and the fae girl looks away guiltily. “Fine,” the hag croaks out finally, and raps her cane against the pavement.

The crowd that’s collected slowly begins to disperse, some more reluctantly than others.

Makoto sighs in relief and turns back to Haru. His green eyes are bright and wide with hope.

“Haru?” he says expectantly.

 There are many things that can crumple a man’s spirit. Being kicked in particularly sensitive areas is one of them. Puppy-dog eyes are another.

But after the morning he’s had, Haru absolutely _refuses to_ be won over by puppy-dog eyes.

“Make it stop,” he says flatly.

Makoto blinks. “What?”

Haru sighs. “Make it stop. The— the things I see. Make them go away.”

It takes a moment for Makoto to process that, but once he gets it, his face falls faster than a refrigerator pushed off the side of a building.

“But, I can’t just—” he says, confused. “I mean, this is your _destiny,_ Haru!”

“I don’t care,” Haru says, without missing a beat. “I don’t care about destiny or fate or any of that. I just want to swim. So make it go away.”

And then, having made his point, he turns and strides away.

“Wait, wait, but _Haru,”_ Makoto wails. “Don’t do this _again!_  Can't you at least hear us out?"

Haru keeps walking. He is stubborn, even for a human being.

This time, Makoto follows.

 

* * *

 

Somewhere out there, at this very moment in time but in a place that no human nor otherworld creature could ever dream of venturing, the gods are watching.

Unsurprisingly, because no amount of omniscience or omnipresence can make a jerk any less of a jerk (and in fact seems to exacerbate the problem to a certain degree), they are laughing.


	4. a servant's devotion

Long ago, only a few decades after humanity wiped the reality of the otherworlders from their collective memory and relegated their very existence to the realm of the imaginary and unreal, the gods scooped a handful of water from a pond and fashioned it into a boy.

“You are our servant,” they said to him, “And this is your world, where you shall carry out our bidding.”

The newly born boy, with his hair as brown as the soil of the riverbed and his eyes as green as the lily pads floating upon the surface of the water, looked upon his new world and smiled. He was happy to be born, for the universe that he saw around him was a beautiful one.

For many centuries, that boy would carry out his masters’ commands compliantly. He had no need for defiance, for he had never known anything but that which was his duty.

But over time, that kind-hearted child would grow dissatisfied with the world he had been created for. He saw the sufferings of his people, the invisible creatures who roamed the lands unseen, and he saw how some of them grew twisted and wicked in their suffering.

Seeing his distress, the gods spoke to their creation. “Look to the stars,” they urged him, for although they were sometimes cruel in their omniscience, this dutiful boy was one of their favorites. “Look to the stars, and see the destinies inscribed there.”

Obediently, the boy looked up into the night sky, and written there among the flickering stars was the story of a boy who would one day take apart the walls that humanity had erected with his bare hands.

“Someday that child shall be born,” the gods said, “And you shall lead him to greatness.”

And so Makoto smiled a quiet, gentle smile, and for many thousands of years, he waited with a heart filled to the brim with hope.

 

* * *

 

There is an excellent produce shop next to Iwatobi’s one and only strip mall. It opens at exactly five AM every morning, and closes up again in the evenings, at around eight o’clock.

The girl manning the cashier in that shop on the 2nd of July in the year 2015 is named Yamamoto Sachiko, and she is twenty-two years old.

Her family has owned this particular shop for generations— Sachiko is the latest heir to their vegetable-selling dynasty, and ended up taking over the store right after high school. Her older brother could probably have done it instead, but Sachiko had liked vegetables more.

She sighs, twirling a strand of dyed brown hair between her fingers. It’s been a slow day for Yamamoto Produce. As much as she likes vegetables, working in the store can be kind of boring when no one’s coming in.

She is daydreaming and staring out the window, when she sees the boy.

He’s walking briskly down the street with his hands balled up into fists, and he’s talking to himself. Wait, no— he’s _arguing_ with himself. His face is angry and tight, and he keeps glancing unhappily at the empty air beside him.

Well, that’s not something you see every day.

Sachiko stares, for a moment, and then sighs once more as the boy wanders out of sight. He’d been so _cute_ , too. Sachiko had always been rather partial to shiny dark hair like a richly colored eggplant.

Such a shame he’d been so weird, really.

 

* * *

 

“Haru—”

“No.”

“But, Haru—”

It is in the nature of all things to crack and crumble into dust. Exceptions are never made— not for the mountains or for the greatest works of art, and certainly not for the chosen ones of the gods. Even a calm boy like Haru, when pushed far enough, will begin to crack around the edges.

“I said, _no_ ,” he snaps, tight and blunt, and tries to resist the urge to stab Makoto with the nearest sharp object in reach.

Makoto gives him a wounded look, like a puppy that’s been accidentally kicked by its owner, and bites his lip. His broad shoulders slump. “Couldn’t you just… hear me out?” he says, meek and pitiful.

Haru twitches. “Will you leave me alone if I do?”

For a heartbeat, Makoto hesitates, and then his face crumples. “I can, if you want me to,” he says miserably. “But it won’t change anything. You can’t run away from destiny, Haru. If I go, someone else will just come in my place, and in the meantime, you’ll be in _danger_.”

It only takes a few seconds for the ramifications of Makoto’s words to sink in. Haru sighs.

 _Destiny_. He hates that word.

“Fine,” he says blankly, all the heat draining out of his voice like water down the sink. “Just tell me, then.”

Makoto’s whole face lights up. “Really?” he says, almost disbelievingly.

His eyes, Haru notices distantly, are a sort of translucent green, like a fragment of glass from a broken bottle that’s been worn away around the edges by the sea and left stranded on the beach after high tide.

Haru says nothing. Instead, he crosses his arms, raises his chin, and waits.

“Oh, uh, okay,” says Makoto uncertainly. He glances around, and then extends a hand. “Um… do you want to go somewhere else to talk about this?”

Haru looks at the hand, and considers it.

They are standing in the middle of the street, although not too many people are out and about. The few people who _are_ out doing their shopping keep glancing uncertainly at him, an unfortunate side effect of having a conversation with an invisible otherworlder in public. If he stays here for much longer, there is a significant possibility that someone will call the police.

He takes Makoto’s hand, and then they are once again elsewhere.

 

* * *

 

Elsewhere, this time, is not a pool. Rather, it is a secluded corner of a park that Haru vaguely recognizes as being near his school. His homeroom teacher walks her dog here, he thinks.

They are standing in front of a bench. It’s a little cooler here, in the shade, and the faintest of breezes whispers against the nape of his neck. The sunlight filtering in through the trees has a greenish tinge. It feels warm against Haru’s face.

Makoto smiles shyly. The light catches on his hair like it’s spun out of burnished gold.

“Do you want to sit down?” he says.

Haru nods, and sits down heavily. Less than a second later, Makoto does the same.

“We really _have_ been waiting for you,” Makoto says eventually. “For a long time. Thousands of years, really. All of us, we’ve been waiting for a human to be born with a destiny like yours.”

“I—” starts Haru, and then stops, unsure of what he was going to say. _I’m not really that special_ , maybe, or _I don’t even know what my destiny is._

Instead, he looks away and says nothing at all.

“No one can see us but you,” Makoto says softly. His voice is distant and out of focus, like it’s filtering in from a dream, or something along those lines. He is not a human being, no matter how much he looks like one. “No one knows we exist but you. And before you, there was no one who knew we were here at all.”

Haru swallows, harshly, but his throat is dry.

“Sometimes, even _we_ wondered whether we were real,” Makoto continues. “If no one knew of our existence, then could it truly be called an existence at all? But the gods promised us that someday, someone would see us, and that that person— that they would be our deliverance.”

All of a sudden Makoto is looking directly at Haruka, and the expression on his face is so intense that it makes Haru dizzy, like he’s been underwater for too long and there’s no air in his lungs.

Nanase Haruka is a boy chosen by the gods for greatness, but in the end he is still just a boy with no idea what to do. His heart is beating so fast that it feels like it’s about to pound right out of his chest.

It almost feels like he's drowning on dry land.

“And that’s you,” says Makoto, so quietly that Haru almost misses it. He reaches out and touches Haru’s cheek— vaguely, Haru realizes that his hands are trembling. “You were born to be our salvation, Haru.”

Haru opens his mouth to say something, though he's not sure what, and—

And then somewhere not too far away, there’s a sound like the howling of an animal. It’s a gut-wrenching sound, hateful and wretched, and it makes Haru’s skin prickle with wrongness.

Makoto’s eyes widen.

“Oh no,” he says. “Oh no, no, _no_.” He looks around frantically, and then reaches out to take Haru’s hand again.

It’s too late.

Nothing happens when their fingers brush, and all of a sudden Haru can feel pressure crushing down on him like they’re a hundred miles beneath the surface of the ocean. Dread trickles down his spine like a rush of ice cold water.

“We have to leave,” Makoto says frantically, and he stands in one fluid motion, pulling Haru up with him. His eyes are wild, and his grip tightens around Haru’s hand. “It’s not safe here. Teleporting won’t work— we have to run.”

Haru doesn’t even have to ask why. He hears the howl again, closer this time.

 

* * *

 

Makoto runs and runs like he’s never even heard of exhaustion.

It makes sense, of course. Makoto is not human, and he is not bound by earthly restraints. Even now, as he pulls Haru down the streets and through a winding network of alleyways that Haru didn’t even know Iwatobi _had_ , his face is still dry and his clothing is impeccable, not a droplet of sweat in sight.

Haru would probably be more curious about that, if it wasn’t for the fact that whatever is chasing them is just a hair’s length way from catching them.

Everything is happening too quickly. It's too much and too fast, and one second he is being told that he is a  _savior_ , that he is Makoto's  _deliverance_ , and the next they're both running for their lives.

It's disconcerting and confusing, and it's making his head spin like he's trapped in a whirlpool, or like he's been caught up in a riptide and is being dragged away from the shore. In an abstract and obtusely metaphorical way, maybe that  _is_ what's happening.

Makoto glances back every few seconds, as if the solid weight of Haru’s hand in his own is not enough to make sure that Haru is still there, still safe and sound. He is not sweating but he is breathing hard, and his face is taut with fear.

The pressure being exerted is overwhelming, like gravity itself is trying to drag them down into the soil beneath the concrete pavement. It feels like they’re running through treacle and Haru wheezes, his lungs burn for breath and—

And then the world is spinning around him and Haru trips, taking Makoto down with him. The concrete scrapes against his leg and tears a long gash up his trousers, but his heart is beating too fast to feel the pain.

They are alone in a dark alleyway, the buildings stretching out high up into the sky around them. In the distance, he can hear the sounds of cars rumbling by.

Makoto is on his feet again, quick as a flash, and he tugs at Haru’s hand desperately.

“Please,” he says, almost begging. “Get up, Haru, you have to, you _have_ to—”

Haru grits his teeth and staggers to his feet but not soon enough, and then they are no longer alone.

The creature is enormous, and just barely fits in the junction between the two buildings. It is skeletal and cat-like, and it surveys them with two sets of wide, feral eyes. Its six tails lash as one, and when it lets out a low, echoing growl, its hot breath stinks of rot.

 

Faintly, in a small and rather idiotic part of his brain, Haru thinks that the creature sort of looks like a cat monster he saw crossing the road, once.

And then it _roars_ , and Makoto is running again, with Haru’s hand clenched tightly in his own. He makes a turn, and—

It’s a dead end. The graffiti scrawled across the concrete walls blink mockingly at them neon yellow and fluorescent pink. They stumble to a halt; Haru’s heart sinking like it’s weighed down with stones.

The creature slinks into the alley behind them, its pupils blown and hungry.

 _There is no escape,_ whispers the wind in Haru’s ears. He tries not to look at the saliva dripping from the thing’s yellowing teeth.

“Aren’t you afraid?” says Makoto, his voice a low rumble at Haru’s side. He tugs Haru backwards and takes a small forwards, his broad shoulders tight with tension.

Haru locks eyes with the creature, takes in the bony white plates all along its body and its savage yellow eyes, bloodshot and bulging. _Yes_ , he thinks, but what comes out of his mouth instead is a trembling and uncertain, “No.”

“I’ll protect you,” Makoto says clearly, like it’s a challenge. “I swear I will.”

For a long moment, there is silence, as if the world itself has stopped to rearrange itself in the wake of that promise. One of the creature’s heads licks its greying lips, tongue lolling out like a fat pink worm.

Then, before Haru even has a chance to react, the other head shoots forwards, jaws gaping wide and neck stretching out obscenely long, and it’s flying straight for Haru’s _neck—_

 _I’m going to die,_ he thinks, frozen to the spot. Somehow, the prospect of death seems less terrifying that it should. He closes his eyes, and—

And nothing.

There’s the wet, squelching sound of teeth sinking into flesh, and Makoto makes a choked, gasping sound.

When he opens his eyes, Makoto is standing in front of him, with the creature’s teeth sunken deep into the flesh of his shoulder. There is blood everywhere, but it’s not red— instead it’s crystal clear, splattered on the ground and on Haru and soaking into Makoto’s clothes.

It looks almost like water, or maybe tears.

**[tbc]**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S HERE!!!
> 
> I got distracted by _Fire Emblem: Fates_ hype, guys. So much so that I wrote pre-release fanfic, posted it, and immediately felt ashamed. Jetlag was also not helpful in the writing of this chapter-- twelve hour time differences are hardcore.


End file.
